With the pandemic and uncertain economic situation, you might be wondering how to help if you can't go out to volunteer or spare much money.

Introducing BOINC: it allows you to donate spare computer/phone power to scientific projects. Turning regular PCs into supercomputrers 1/?

Once installed @BOINCNetwork runs in the background performing a little bit of complex calculations, without slowing down your actual computer use (some tweaks might be needed).

Users can subscribe to projects ranging from maths to COVID to agriculture 2/?

Nerds from the 1990s might remember BOINC from Seti@Home.

As setup can be a bit daunting and there's over 30 projects to choose from, we'll use @WCGrid as an example project after we go through installation on multiple platforms. 3/?

Windows. Going to https://boinc.berkeley.edu/  should present you with yellow download button, magically taking you to the right page. There's now two download options and while the green is tempting, we'll go with blue because most project don't need Vbox. 4/?

cont. Once downloaded, it's your usual Windows installer, no particular tweak required during setup as far as I know. Once the setup is done, you can skip ahead to where I explain how to add a project etc.

Video instructions by someone else:

OS X. You only get one button from the download page. And it's green. Luckily, even the Mac OS version comes with a simple pointy-clicky setup.

Again there's a video I didn't make:

5/?

Linux. I know there's an enticing download button on the website, but you should really go with your package manager on this.

If you want a GUI you'll need both boinc and boinc-manager. You might need to manually launch boinc before opening the manager for things to work 6/?

Android. There's an app for that! Just look up BOINC in your app store, or here's a link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.berkeley.boinc

There's no iOS app to my knowledge, so we move on to projects and setup next 7/?

. Theoretically, once you launch BOINC Manager it should show you the Add Project dialogue. If not it's under Tools > Add Project. 8/?

We'll pick World Community Grid and create an account when prompted. You'll need the login details later.

Why @WCGrid btw? It's a bit like a container: you can pick as many of the following areas to help: COVID, agriculture, cancer, AIDS, TB, microbiome 9/?

. On the App the Project Selection window looks like this and can be found by pressing the menu button (three horizontal lines on the left) 10/?

How do you decide which @WCGrid projects? By logging into the website and finding a menu item called My Projects.

https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org 

As an aside, yes you can get set up straight from there ignoring all I've said so far, but my way works for other projects too 11/?

Example of non-WCGrid projects:
- Asteroids@Home uses your graphic cards to learn more about asteroids

- Rosetta@Home mostly medical molecular bio

- NSF@Home Number Field Sieve factorization of large integers (I don't know what this is either, but it's maths) 12/?

This should get you started on your BOINC journey. My personal experience is limited to Linux and Android versions but I can try to help if needed.

Options > Computing Preferences if where you play around if BOINC is being a bit greedy with your resources btw 13/13